I replied that I was only waiting to know whether he had anything else to say to me or my brother before the latter left the hulk.
He did not answer except to snap out, “You can go,” to Hughes, but when, after a surly “Good night both,” that worthy had taken his departure, Mullen turned to me again.
“Now listen. I’m a dangerous man to trifle with, and a desperate one, and there are not many things I’d stick at to be level with the man who played me false. But I can be a good friend to those who play me fair, as well as a relentless enemy. Act squarely by me while you are here, and keep your mouth shut when you leave, and you’ll never have cause to regret it. But if you play tricks here, or blab when you’re gone, you’ll do the worst day’s work for yourself you ever did in your life. Do you understand?”
He waited for a reply, so I nodded and said, “Fair do is fair do, guv’nor. That’s all right.”
“Very well,” he continued; “now we understand each other, and no more need be said about it. I shall sleep in the hold as I’ve done before, for if any one came out to the hulk for any reason it wouldn’t do for them to see me. You’ll take your nap here as your brother did. So I bid you good-night.”
“Good-night, sir,” I answered civilly, holding the door open for him.
“Now I’ll have a look at the paper that fell out of your pocket in the tussle, my friend,” I added, as soon as he was out of hearing. “I’ve got all the night before me; for I don’t intend to take the nap of which you were speaking until I’ve got you safe in custody—otherwise it might be a nap to which there would come no waking.”
CHAPTER XXX
MORE DEVILRY
There was no fastening to the door of my cabin, but on passing my hand over the place where a fastening might have been expected, a flake of soft substance caught in my finger-nail and dropped to the floor. This, when I picked it up, proved to be a pellet of bread kneaded to the consistency of putty or dough. Taking the swing lamp from its bracket I examined the door more closely and saw that there had once been a fastening of some sort. A closer examination convinced me that the person who had removed the fastening had been to the pains of plugging the empty screw-holes with kneaded bread, after which he had apparently rubbed dirt-smeared fingers over the place where the fastening had been, in order to hide the marks left by removal.
When I picked out the bread-plugs—which had only recently been put in, as they were still damp—I saw that the screw-holes were clean inside, although there were tiny rings of dirt on the outside where the roughened edges had brushed against the fingers and collected whatever it was which had been smeared upon them.